Over Labor Day weekend, President Barack Obama once again showed his willingness to use questionable executive action to push his radical environmental agenda.

While in China, President Obama joined the Paris global warming “agreement” along with Chinese President Xi Jinping – without the blessing of the U.S. Senate. At issue is whether or not the policies in the document represent a treaty, which would constitutionally require the advice and consent of the Senate. The Obama administration contends the pact is not really a treaty, but merely an international agreement. Never mind that the actual textbook definition of treaty is “any agreement or compact.” Regardless of the word describing the pact, the policies laid out in Paris would have a devastating impacting on the U.S. economy.

The Paris global warming pact emerged from a United Nations conference held in the city last year. If ratified or joined by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of global emissions, the pact would go into effect and call on countries to radically reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions. Yet reducing CO2 emissions would require extreme policy changes that would harm many of the economies of countries that join the pact.

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses during a press conference after the conclusion of the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The Obama administration employed a grammatical magic trick to justify not submitting the pact to the Senate. The document originally said “Developed country Parties shall continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets.”

This specific language would have legally required developed countries like the U.S. to reduce emissions and even the Obama administration believed when worded this way the pact would need the confirmation of the Senate. But likely with a wink and a nod, almost all instances of the word “shall” were replaced with “should” at the request of Secretary of State John Kerry at the last minute of the Paris conference.

This sleight of hand in substituting “shall” for “should” meant, to the Obama administration at least, that the document no longer needed the consent of the Senate. So far, every other country besides the U.S. has ratified the Paris pact, meaning they each put it up for a vote before their country’s respective legislative body. By not putting the pact up for a vote before the Senate, President Obama is the only head of state who believes he has the power to join the pact on his own authority.

Officials in the Obama administration demonstrate an amazing ability to speak out of both sides of their mouths. Remember the shared responsibility payment that was part of Obamacare?

First, President Obama called it a fee for not buying health insurance while he was campaigning in support of Obamacare before its passage. After Obamacare became law, the fee morphed into a tax when Obama administration lawyers were defending the law before the Supreme Court – since calling it a tax made for a better legal defense.

The same bait-and-switch will occur with the Paris global warming pact. President Obama says its merely an agreement because it is convenient for him to avoid a vote in the Senate where it would most likely fail. But the Paris pact will become legally important when it is time to defend President Obama’s carbon regulation, the so-called Clean Power Plan, before the U.S. Supreme Court. It is likely that the lawyers defending Obama’s carbon regulation will argue that the supposedly non-binding agreement actually gives the EPA legal authority to regulate carbon emissions. The liberal blog ThinkProgress made this exact argument. This “agreement” does not have legal authority at the international level to compel countries to reduce carbon emissions. But at the domestic level, the non-legal agreement magically gives the EPA new legal authority to reduce carbon emissions, according to defenders of Obama’s carbon regulation. Just like for Obamacare, words can have whatever meaning is most politically convenient.

Regardless of the legal merits, the impact of the Paris global warming pact will be to harm the U.S. economy. Radically reducing carbon dioxide emissions means more expensive electricity, job losses, and reduced economic growth. Studies have shown that policies to reduce CO2 emissions are harmful to the U.S. economy and politically unpopular. The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade proposal of 2009 would have destroyed over a million jobs and raised the average family’s annual electricity bill by $1,241 according to analysis by the Heritage Foundation and the bill failed to make it out of the Senate. Similar analysis of carbon taxes and President Obama’s carbon regulation also found job losses, higher electricity prices, and reduced GDP growth.

Instead of building consensus for his desired policies, President Obama has repeatedly shown he is willing to stretch the legal limits of his authority. By entering the US into the Paris global warming pact, President Obama ignores the important constitutional role of the Senate in crafting foreign policy. Americans deserve to have their voice heard through the elected legislative representatives.

Grant Kidwell is a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity where he focuses on energy and environmental issues. He hold’s an MA in Economics from George Mason University and a BA in Political Science from James Madison University.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.